What is Oscar, BrightPay’s AI employee onboarding assistant, and how does it work?

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Oscar by BrightPay is an AI assistant built directly into BrightPay Cloud that automates new employee onboarding via WhatsApp and a secure link. It collects personal details, P45s, bank statements, and proof of address from new starters automatically — validating everything in real-time and delivering clean, accurate data ready to import into BrightPay. A process that typically takes up to 7 days of back-and-forth is reduced to around 1.5 hours, with less than 5 minutes of involvement required from your team.

For payroll bureaus, accountancy practices, and employers processing regular new starters, Oscar removes the manual effort that has always made onboarding one of the most time-consuming parts of payroll administration.

What problem does Oscar solve for payroll bureaus and employers?

New starter onboarding has always been one of the most repetitive and error-prone tasks in payroll. Practices and bureaus typically spend days chasing clients for information, following up on missing documents, manually re-keying data, and correcting errors before a new employee can be added to payroll.

For bureaus managing multiple clients, this compounds quickly. A steady flow of new starters across a portfolio of clients means constant back-and-forth — often across email, phone calls, and spreadsheets — with no guarantee the data that arrives is complete or correct.

Oscar addresses this directly. Rather than relying on the practice or bureau to chase information, Oscar handles that conversation on your behalf — automatically, via WhatsApp, at whatever time suits the new starter.

How does Oscar collect and validate new starter information?

Oscar works by initiating a natural conversation with the new starter via WhatsApp.

What is Oscar and how does it work?

Oscar is BrightPay’s AI Employee Onboarding Assistant, built directly into BrightPay Cloud. It handles the entire new starter onboarding process automatically and works through two parts:

• Part one – Oscar contacts the new starter on WhatsApp, gathering non-sensitive information through the conversation

• Part two – Oscar sends the new starter a secure link to a web form, where they complete the sensitive parts of the onboarding – bank details, NI number and P45 details – in a dedicated, encrypted environment

If anything is missing or unclear, Oscar asks for it himself. No intervention from the practice is required.

Once the new starter completes the process, the data arrives in BrightPay clean, validated, and ready for approval. No manual re-keying. No chasing. No risk of transcription errors.

Who benefits from using Oscar by BrightPay?

Oscar creates value for three groups — practices, their employer clients, and new starters themselves.

Payroll bureaus and accountancy practices — Oscar eliminates the time your team spends chasing clients and new starters for information. Every new starter currently costs your team 30–45 minutes of admin: chasing, re-keying, correcting. Across a client portfolio with regular turnover, that adds up to a significant drain on capacity. Oscar removes all of it, freeing your team for higher-value work — or enabling you to take on more clients without increasing headcount.

There is also a compliance benefit. Manual data entry introduces errors, and errors in payroll introduce risk. Because Oscar collects information directly from the employee and validates it before anything reaches BrightPay, the data you receive is more accurate and requires far less correction.

Employers and SMEs — Oscar gives your employees a professional onboarding experience from day one, without your team having to organise it. New starters can complete the process at a time that suits them — evenings, weekends, whenever — via a platform they already use. Oscar delivers the highest impact for employers with regular new starter activity: hospitality, care, retail, seasonal businesses, and multi-site employers where keeping the process consistent across locations is a challenge.

New starters themselves — Rather than receiving a packet of forms to complete or phone calls to answer, new starters go through a straightforward WhatsApp conversation that takes around 10 minutes. No app to download, no account to create, no office hours to work around.

What does the Oscar onboarding process look like in practice?

The process works as follows:

1. The payroll bureau, practice, or employer sends a new starter onboarding invitation via BrightPay Cloud

2. The new starter receives a WhatsApp message from Oscar

3. Oscar guides the new starter through a natural conversation, collecting non sensitive information before sending a secure link to collect sensitive information – bank details, NI number and P45 details – in a dedicated, encrypted environment

4. All information is validated automatically as it is submitted

5. Clean, structured data is delivered back to BrightPay, ready for the payroll professional to review and approve

6. Once approved, the new starter is added to BrightPay — with no manual data entry required

The total time from invitation to complete data: approximately 1.5 hours. The time your team spends: less than 5 minutes.

Can payroll bureaus charge for Oscar as a service?

Yes — and many practices in the Early Adopter Programme are already doing so. Oscar is not simply a background efficiency gain. It is a genuinely new capability that your clients will notice, and that makes it something worth pricing.

There are three broad approaches bureaus are taking:

Per-starter fee — Charging £10–15 per new starter is simple to explain, easy to invoice, and immediately visible to clients as a cost saving compared to the time they previously spent managing the process themselves. It is a straightforward entry point for the commercial conversation.

Managed onboarding retainer — A monthly retainer per employer bundles onboarding into your wider service package, creating predictable revenue for your practice and positioning you as a full-service payroll partner. Clients have no admin overhead at all.

Value conversation anchor — Some practices are absorbing Oscar into their existing fees but using it to justify renewals, demonstrate concrete time savings, and differentiate from lower-cost competitors. This is particularly effective for retaining high-turnover clients.

To put the revenue opportunity in context:

*These figures are illustrative. Your actual results will depend on your client base, fee structure, and volumes.

How does Oscar compare to traditional new starter onboarding methods?

The core difference is where the effort sits. Traditional onboarding places the administrative burden on the payroll professional or bureau. Oscar shifts that entirely, handling the process automatically while delivering better quality data as a result.

For practices considering how to compare BrightPay’s Oscar to other onboarding tools: unlike standalone onboarding platforms, Oscar is built natively into BrightPay Cloud, meaning there is no separate system to manage, no integration to maintain, and no additional logins for your clients.

How can I get access to Oscar by BrightPay?

Oscar is currently available through the BrightPay Oscar Early Adopter Programme (EAP). A group of BrightPay users — payroll bureaus, accountancy practices, and employers — are already using Oscar in their day-to-day work and providing feedback that is directly shaping how the product develops.

The EAP includes:

• Early access to Oscar before general release

• A dedicated support contact throughout the programme

• Resources including a Quick Start Guide, Client Conversation Guide, and Practice Benefits Guide

• Regular group check-in sessions with the BrightPay team

• A direct line to share ideas and vote on feature requests via the Oscar ideas portal

• 1:1 sessions available with the BrightPay product team

If you are a payroll bureau, accountancy practice, or employer processing new starters regularly and want to be among the first to offer this to your clients and employees, the Early Adopter Programme is the way to get involved.

Register for our upcoming BrightPay webinar on Tuesday, 9th June to see Oscar in action, hear from practices already using it, and find out how to join the Early Adopter Programme.

Frequently asked questions about Oscar by BrightPay

This content may have been developed with the assistance of AI tools. Content is reviewed by a member of the Bright team before publication. Guidance on legislation can be obtained from your industry body.